Thursday

Oct 5, 2017 at 11:01 AMOct 5, 2017 at 11:07 AM

The original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along,” which opened at the Alvin (now the Neil Simon) Theatre on Nov. 16, 1981, closed after just 44 previews and 16 performances.

The show may have come out of the gate as a box-office flop, but with a score that includes Sondheim classics like “Not a Day Goes By,” “Old Friends,” and “Good Thing Going,” it developed a loyal following and has long been a cult favorite.

Membership in the “Merrily We Roll Along” cult will likely swell to overflow with the simply splendid Huntington Theatre Company production now at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Theatre.

Based on the 1934 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, “Merrily We Roll Along” opens in 1976 and then travels back in time almost 20 years to tell the story of Franklin Shepard, an ascendant Broadway composer who, unable to resist the siren call of fame and fortune, leaves the Great White Way and his two closest friends and collaborators behind to become a Hollywood movie producer.

The early missteps of “Merrily” created a fissure in the once fail-safe relationship between Sondheim and director and producer Harold Prince, whose earlier collaborations included “Company,” “Follies,” “Pacific Overtures,” and “Sweeney Todd.”

But whatever blame was going around should probably have landed on book writer George Furth, whose pithiness sometimes seem forced. Show-business sophistication swirls around these characters, but even their drollest observations could use more depth. That said, many of the characters are very appealing, and the story of time-tested friendship is compelling.

Marking an impressive directorial debut, Maria Friedman, an Olivier Award-winning star of the musical stage, recreates for the Huntington her marvelous production that first opened at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory in 2012 and transferred to the West End the following year.

To play the longtime friends at the heart of “Merrily,” Friedman has brought two stars of her award-winning London production with her to Boston – Mark Umbers, who reprises his role as Franklin Shepard, and Damian Humbley as the often-overshadowed lyricist, Charley Kringas. Rounding out the troika is Broadway’s Eden Espinosa as wise-cracking theater critic Mary Flynn.

The dashing Umbers is the center of attention for most of the action. Humbley, however, also makes his somewhat schlubby character very worth watching. And Espinosa uses every hard edge you’d expect from an ink-stained wretch to conceal her long-held soft spot for Franklin. The trio demonstrate winning brio on act one’s bouncy “Old Friends.”

Several Boston-area actors – including Christopher Chew, Bransen Gates, Cameron Levesque, Carla Martinez, Brendan O’Brien, Maurice Emmanuel Parent, Robert Saoud, Patrick Varner, and Ceit M. Zweil – more than hold their own with their London and Broadway counterparts.

Two of the local performers who shine the brightest here are Whitman native Jennifer Ellis and Walpole resident Aimee Doherty.

In her Huntington debut, Ellis, as Franklin’s first wife, Beth, offers up a hauntingly beautiful rendition of “Not a Day Goes By” – emblematic of Sondheim’s gifts as both a composer and lyricist – in act one, and reprises it with a fitting change in tone in act two.

Doherty – seen previously in the Huntington productions of Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” and “Sunday in the Park with George” – plays Franklin’s second wife, Gussie, an always gussied-up actress who leads with self-focused aplomb. Doherty also lends her warm-toned vocals to a wonderful “Growing Up.”

Another memorable number is the 1960-set “Bobby and Jackie and Jack,” a sweet ode to not only our 35th President, his First Lady, and Attorney General brother, but also to many others on the Kennedy family tree, including Joe and Rose, Eunice and Sarge, Pat and Peter, Jean and Steve, and, of course, Ted and Joan.

An excellent orchestra, led by music director Matthew Stern, sets the mood throughout with perfectly modulated brass adding emphasis and interest to the stellar score.

Scenic and costume designer Soutra Gilmour’s deceptively simple, multi-purpose set serves as everything from 1950s and 1960s New York rooftops, apartments, and the Alvin Theatre, to a circa-1973 NBC-TV studio, where Morgan Kirner channels a young Jane Pauley, and a sleek Bel Air mansion.

Gilmour’s costumes perfectly capture each period, too, with the mod black and white outfits for act two’s “The Blob” popping as if they were technicolor.